It is believed that due to the globalization, mergers and acquisitions of companies, as well as specific instances of decentralization, enterprises increasingly find themselves confronted today with the task of having to quickly adapt their processes, products, and services to changing market conditions. The individual processes are supported on an internal-enterprise, or intra-corporate, basis and, to some extent, externally as well, by a complex IT infrastructure, and are carried out as partially or fully automated processes.
In this context, the IT infrastructure appears to become more and more closely meshed with the supporting processes, internal structures and product architectures, and, in some instances, with the process architecture.
Often, a process change is only effected by altering the IT infrastructure or the IT architecture and vice versa. In addition, for example, for companies in the telematics industry, a product is itself represented by an IT infrastructure or an IT architecture, or the IT infrastructure constitutes part or all of a product.
Process architecture is understood to be a model of coordinated processes and business structures, including, for example, process hierarchies, organigrams, and process models. IT architecture is understood to be a model of all systems, networks, software, hardware, etc. Product architecture is understood to be a model of all products, including, for example, hierarchies, components, IT support, etc. A product architecture, for example, may be the offer of an online service. Modeling is understood to be a mapping of real systems, such as enterprises in a computer system, and includes the description, management, graphical visualization and analysis of data by these systems. In the broader sense, a system is understood to be the entire enterprise, including external relations, the integrated information on the overall system becoming a vital prerequisite for its comprehensive description, analysis, and planning
The complexities of the process world appear to depend so greatly on the IT infrastructure world, the product world and/or the product architecture, that a separate description, analysis, planning and optimization of any one of the three worlds would not do justice to the complexity of the situation. The result would, therefore, be altogether suboptimal, since such a subsystem, and not the overall system, would be adapted and/or optimized.
The reference it FOKUS 2/99, at pages 22-28, “Ein weiteres Schlagwort der Informationstechnologie? Knowledgemanagement” (i.e., “Another Buzzword of Information Technology? Knowledge management”), purportedly concerns some basic explanations regarding knowledge management in enterprises and administrative entities. Further, some theoretical problems and the actual practical problems are purportedly discussed in additional articles, such as, for example: “Knowledegemanagement Anwendungen, Märkte und Technologien” (i.e., “Knowledge Management Applications, Markets and Technologies”), 2/99, pages 32-35; “Herausforderung Wissensmanagement: Zwischen Wissen und Information” (i.e., “The Challenge of Knowledge Management: Between Knowledge and Information”),2/99, pages 29-30; “Wissensmanagement, eine Investition die sich auszahlt” (i.e., “Knowledge Management, An Investment That Pays Off”), 3/99, pages 36-38; “ETL-Tools, Datenaufbereitung für das Dataware House” (i.e., “ETL Tools, Data Preparation for the Dataware House”), 3/99, pages 14-22; “Media Daten, Repository als Drehscheibe” (i.e., “Media Data, Repository as Disk”), 3/99, pages 32-35; and it Management 10/98, pp. 38-42, under the title “Ganzheitliche Betrachtung des Software-Reengineering, ein Stiefkind im Unternehmen” (i.e., “Holistic View of Software Reengineering, a Stepchild in the Enterprise”).
The articles listed show that subsystems have, in fact, been separately described, and that theoretical observations of the interdependencies of overall systems and structures have, in fact, been made, but, that there are no known, successful, integrated, computerized methods in existence for mapping and integrating, as well as controlling enterprise processes, i.e., integrated management of the processes, of the IT infrastructure and of the products.
Actual and consistent information on the elements, relations, and interdependencies of processes, architectures, on the supporting IT infrastructure and, in particular, in the case of telematics firms, also on the products, constitute the basis of a successful, integrated management of the “enterprise” system. When subsystems are separately described, without giving consideration to the interdependencies within the overall system, for example, of a global enterprise, information from other subsystems arc not able to be related to the former because of incongruencies in the models. Thus, integrated information on the overall system becomes a vital precondition for its comprehensive description, analysis, and planning As already explained, no methodology exists at the present time for modeling such a system, which would enable a global and integrated mapping using uniform models, formal notations, and relations.